Literary Women, Reason, and the Fiction of Enlightenment

Eighteenth-century women writers like Françoise de Graffigny, Marie Jeanne Riccoboni, and Isabelle de Charrière help us to understand why we still need the Enlightenment. Such writers challenged the stereotype of women’s inferior reason. This article examines the fiction of Enlightenment in two senses: first, works of fiction can illuminate Enlightenment; second, current understandings of Enlightenment are fictional to the extent that they overlook women’s contributions. Faithful to the eighteenth century, this study is also relevant to the twenty-first. It asks: How would current understandings of Enlightenment change if women’s texts were taken seriously? How do Enlightenment ideals remain relevant today?